All posts tagged Australia

L Capital Asia, a private-equity firm backed by LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, has made its second investment in Australia, a person familiar with the matter said Monday.

L Capital, also backed by Groupe Arnault, the holding company of LVMH chairman and chief executive Bernard Arnault, and Malaysia’s YTL Corp., beat competition from other interested parties to acquire a 49.9% stake of Australian retailer R.M.Williams for around 52 million Australian dollars (US$54.3 million). The Sydney-based company has made handcrafted boots since its 1932 inception.

Friday’s 5.07 billion Australian dollar (US$5.3 billion) ports deal has set several milestones.

The transaction saw an Industry Funds Management-led consortium beat two other consortiums led by Canadian pension funds in an auction of 99-year leases for Port Botany and Port Kembla in New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state.

The steady rise in its shares for the better part of the past year has increased the value of scrip in any potential bid for rival Echo Entertainment Group Ltd.

Shares in Crown–controlled by billionaire James Packer–have risen more than 50% since the beginning of June, lifting its market value to almost 9.3 billion Australian dollars (US$9.8 billion). In the same period, Echo’s shares have fallen almost 13% and its market capitalization is now about A$3 billion.

Woodside Petroleum Ltd.’s decision to shelve a US$40 billion-plus natural gas development onshore Western Australia has won praise from investors and analysts who were concerned its hefty price tag would render it an expensive flop.

The Australian oil company says natural gas from the Browse field, which counts Royal Dutch Shell PLC and BP PLC among other shareholders, will no longer be piped to a processing facility at James Price Point on the Western Australia state coast.

The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about, Oscar Wilde famously said.

But for Deutsche Bank, having its logo plastered across the hull of a boat carrying asylum seekers may not be the publicity it had in mind.

The boat, carrying 66 men, women and children likely from south Asia, arrived at Geraldton port in Western Australia on Tuesday having been undetected by border patrols. That has prompted widespread interest from local media and photographers, especially given that immigration is a touchstone issue politically in Australia.

China’s Sichuan Hanlong Group is facing more than just a blow to its pride after an offer worth 1.18 billion Australian dollars (US$1.23 billion) to acquire full control of Africa-focused iron ore miner Sundance Resources collapsed.

It’s also staring at a steep paper loss on its 14.2% stake in Sundance.

Hanlong paid 44 cents for each of the 443.79 million Sundance shares it acquired from the trustees of the Talbot Group in March 2011, valuing the total transaction at A$190.9 million. Investments made by the Talbot Group were being liquidated after founder Ken Talbot died along with much of the Sundance board in a plane crash when visiting its West African operations in June 2010.

UBS AG’s Australian head of hedge fund sales Thomas Anglin has relocated to New York as part of the creation of a new global sales desk, according to an internal memo obtained by Deal Journal Australia.

Mr. Anglin and New York-based colleague Fred Liljewall will report to Matt Foulds, UBS’s head of Americas equity distribution, and cover hedge funds including Viking, Lone Pine, Blue Ridge, Maverick, Manikay and Tiger Global, according to the memo.

Ms. Raposio, the bank’s Sydney-based head of leveraged debt capital markets for Australia and New Zealand, joined Deustche in London in 2007. She was formerly a director at both Barclays and UBS in London, having begun her career as an actuary with AMP Ltd.

Australia’s banks have more-than quadrupled their exposure to Asia in the past five years as they seek to cash in on the resource-rich nation’s growing trade ties with the region, the country’s central bank said.

The so-called big four commercial banks, Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd., Commonwealth Bank of Australia Ltd., Westpac Banking Corp. and National Australia Bank Ltd., have looked to Asia to boost their profits amid slowing demand for credit at home. The move has been accelerated by the withdrawal of many European lenders from the region as the euro-zone debt crisis deepened.

The Shanghai-based state-owned property developer has plans to invest in a property project in the west coast of the U.S. this year, he said, adding that it is also eyeing a residential project in Melbourne located next to a university. The group is already constructing a mixed-use project in South Korea.

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Dealpolitik is Ronald Barusch's strategic look at deals currently making the headlines as well as the major forces at work in the deal-making world. He was a M&A lawyer with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom for over 30 years. He retired in 2010 after 25 years as a partner at the firm. Click here for his current and archived columns.